Krebs on Security

In-depth security news and investigation

Posts Tagged: flash

Microsoft Windows users and those with AdobeFlash Player or Java installed, it’s time to update again! Microsoft released 13 updates to address some three dozen unique security vulnerabilities. Adobe issued security fixes for its Flash Player software that plugs at least 22 security holes in the widely-used browser component. Meanwhile, Oracle issued an unscheduled security fix for Java, its second security update for Java in as many weeks.

One big critical update from Redmond mends more than a dozen security problems with Internet Explorer. Another critical patch addresses flaws Microsoft Edge — including four that appear to share the same vulnerability identifiers (meaning Microsoft re-used the same vulnerable IE code in its newest Edge browser). Security vendor Qualys as usual has a good roundup of the rest of the critical Microsoft updates.

Adobe issued an update for Flash Player that fixes a slew of security problems with Flash, a very powerful yet vulnerable piece of software that is also unfortunately ubiquitous. After all, as Chris Goettl at Shavlik reminds us, fixing Flash on a modern computer can be a complicated affair: “You need to update Adobe Flash for IE, Flash for Google Chrome, and Flash for Firefox to completely plug all of these 22 vulnerabilities.” Thankfully, Chrome and IE should auto-install the latest Flash version on browser restart (I had to manually restart Chrome to get the latest Flash version). Continue reading →

Patch Tuesday is upon us once again. Adobe today pushed out security fixes for its Flash and Shockwave media players. Separately, Microsoft released seven patch bundles addressing at least 34 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and other software. At least one of the Windows flaws is already being exploited in active attacks.

Six of the seven Microsoft patches released today earned the company’s most dire “critical” rating, meaning the patches plug security holes that could be exploited by malware or miscreants with no help from PC users, save for visiting a hacked site or opening a specially crafted document.

Microsoft and security experts are calling special attention to MS13-053, which fixes at least eight flaws in Windows’ implementation of TrueType font files. These critical TrueType vulnerabilities exist on nearly every supported version of Windows, including XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, and can be exploited to gain complete control over a vulnerable Windows system, just by having the user visit a Web page that contains malicious TrueType content. To make matters worse, Microsoft says one component of this vulnerability (CVE-2013-3660) is already being exploited in the wild.

The U.S Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning about an uptick in online extortion scams that impersonate the FBI and frighten people into paying fines to avoid prosecution for supposedly downloading child pornography and pirated content. This post offers an inside look at one malware gang responsible for orchestrating such scams.

Reveton ransomware scam page impersonating the FBI

In an alert published last week, the FBI said that The Internet Crime Complaint Center — a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center — was “getting inundated with complaints” from consumers targeted or victimized by the scam, which uses drive-by downloads to hijack host machines. The downloaded malware displays a threatening message (see image to the right) and blocks the user from doing anything else unless he pays the fine or finds a way to remove the program.

The FBI alert said the attacks have surged with the help of a “new drive-by virus” called Reveton; in fact, Reveton and its ilk are hardly new. These types of attacks have been around for years, but traditionally have targeted European users. The scam pages used in the attacks mimic official notices from various national police or investigatory agencies, corresponding to the country in which the victim resides. For a breakdown of these Reveton-related ransomware scam pages by country, see this comprehensive gallery set up at botnets.fr.

Reveton.A is blamed in these most recent attacks, and the FBI said it appears Reveton is being distributed in conjunction with Citadel, an offshoot of the ZeuS Trojan that I have writtenabout on several occasions. It is certainly possible that crooks are using Citadel to deploy Reveton, but as I’ll illustrate below, it seems more likely that the attackers in these cases are using exploit kits like BlackHole to plant both threats on victim PCs.

INSIDE A REVETON MALWARE GANG

Operations of one Reveton crime group. Source: ‘Kafeine,’ from botnets.fr.

At least that’s the behavior that’s been observed by a ragtag group of researchers that has been tracking Reveton activity for many months. Some of the researchers are associated with botnets.fr, but they’ve asked to remain nameless because of the sensitivity of their work. One of them, who goes by the screen name “Kafeine,” said much of the Reveton activity traces back to a group that is controlling the operation using reverse proxies at dozens of servers scattered across data centers globally (see this PDF for a more detailed look at the image above).

Kafeine said the groups involved in spreading Reveton are constantly fine-tuning all aspects of their operations, from the scam pages to solidifying their back-end hosting infrastructure. The latest versions of Reveton, for example, serve the scam pages from an encrypted (https://) connection, and only cough up the pages when an infected machine visits and sends a special request. Continue reading →

I recently began publishing a series of advice columns for people who are interested in learning more about security as a craft or profession. For the third installment in this series, I interviewed Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer of WhiteHat Security, a Web application security firm.

A frequent speaker on a broad range of security topics, Grossman stressed the importance of coding, networking, and getting your hands dirty (in a clean way, of course).

BK: How did you get started in computer security?

Grossman: For me it was…I could hack stuff and I did it in my spare time and someone offered me a job — which was Yahoo. But before that, I was just a UNIX admin. I was thinking about this question a lot, and what occurred to me is that I don’t know too many people in infosec who chose infosec as a career. Most of the people who I know in this field didn’t go to college to be infosec pros, it just kind of happened. They followed opportunity.

BK: You might have seen that the last two experts I asked had somewhat different opinions on this question, but how important is it that someone interested in this field know how to code?

Grossman: It’s tough to give solid advice without knowing more about a person. For instance, are they interested in network security or application security? You can get by in IDS and firewall world and system patching without knowing any code; it’s fairly automated stuff from the product side. But with application security, it is absolutely mandatory that you know how to code and that you know software. So with Cisco gear, it’s much different from the work you do with Adobe software security. Infosec is a really big space, and you’re going to have to pick your niche, because no one is going to be able to bridge those gaps, at least effectively.

BK: So would you say hands-on experience is more important that formal security education and certifications?

Grossman: The question is are people being hired into entry level security positions straight out of school? I think somewhat, but that’s probably still pretty rare. There’s hardly anyone coming out of school with just computer security degrees. There are some, but we’re probably talking in the hundreds. I think the universities are just now within the last 3-5 years getting masters in computer security sciences off the ground. But there are not a lot of students in them.

BK: What do you think is the most important qualification to be successful in the security space, regardless of a person’s background and experience level?

Grossman: The ones who can code almost always [fare] better. Infosec is about scalability, and application security is about scalability. And if you can understand code, you have a better likelihood of being able to understand how to scale your solution. On the defense side, we’re out-manned and outgunned constantly. It’s “us” versus “them,” and I don’t know how many of “them,” there are, but there’s going to be too few of “us “at all times. So whatever your solution is or design criteria, you’re going to have to scale it. For instance, you can imagine Facebook…I’m not sure many security people they have, but…it’s going to be a tiny fraction of a percent of their user base, so they’re going to have to figure out how to scale their solutions so they can protect all those users.

Most Web sites use JavaScript, a powerful scripting language that helps make sites interactive. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of Web-based attacks use JavaScript tricks to foist malicious software and exploits onto site visitors. To protect yourself, it is critically important to have an easy method of selecting which sites should be allowed to run JavaScript in the browser.

It is true that selectively allowing JavaScript on known, “safe” sites won’t block all malicious scripting attacks: Even legitimate sites sometimes end up running malicious code when scammers figure out ways to sneak tainted, bogus ads into the major online ad networks. But disallowing JavaScript by default and selectively enabling it for specific sites remains a much safer option than letting all sites run JavaScript unrestricted all the time.

Firefox has many extensions and add-ons that make surfing the Web a safer experience. One extension that I have found indispensable is NoScript. This extension lets the user decide which sites should be allowed to run JavaScript, including Flash Player content. Users can choose to allow specific exceptions either permanently or for a single browsing session.

The NoScript extension makes it easy to place or remove these restrictions on a site-by-site basis, but a novice user may need some practice to get the hang of doing this smoothly. For instance, it’s not uncommon when you’re shopping online to come across a site that won’t let you submit data without fully allowing JavaScript. Then, when you enable scripting so that you can submit your address and payment information, the page often will reload and clear all of the form data you’ve already supplied, forcing you to start over. Also, many sites host content from multiple third-party sites, and users who prefer to selectively enable scripts may find it challenging to discover which scripts need to be enabled for the site to work properly.

Chrome also includes similar script- and Flash blocking functionality that seems designed to minimize some of these challenges by providing fewer options. If you tell Chrome to block JavaScript on all sites by default, when you browse to a site that uses JavaScript, the upper right corner of the browser displays a box with a red “X” through it. If you click that and select “Always allow JavaScript on [site name]” it will permanently enable JavaScript for that site, but it doesn’t give you the option to block third-party JavaScript content on the site as Noscript does. In my testing, I had to manually refresh the page before Chrome allowed scripting on a site that I’d just whitelisted.

Yes, I realize that’s an ambitious title for a blog post about staying secure online, but there are a handful of basic security principles that — if followed religiously — can blunt the majority of malicious threats out there today.

Microsoft has issued security updates to fix at least four security holes in its Windows operating system and other software. Not exactly a fat Patch Tuesday from Microsoft, but depending on how agile you are in updating third-party applications like Flash, iTunes and Shockwave, you may have some additional patching to do.

One of the updates from Microsoft earned a “critical” rating, meaning Redmond believes it could be exploited to break into vulnerable systems with little to no help from users. That flaw, a bug in the way Windows Media Player and Media Center process certain types of media files, could be leveraged by convincing a user to open a tainted video file. This flaw affects Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

A new online resource aims to make it easier to gauge the relative security risk of using different types of popular software, such as Web browsers and media players.

Last month, I railed against the perennial practice of merely counting vulnerabilities in a software product as a reliable measure of its security: Understanding the comparative danger of using different software titles, I argued, requires collecting much more information about each, such as how long known flaws existed without patches. Now, vulnerability management firm Secunia says its new software fact sheets try to address that information gap, going beyond mere vulnerability counts and addressing the dearth of standardized and scheduled reporting of important security parameters for top software titles.

Secunia "fact sheet" on Adobe Reader security flaws.

“In the finance industry, for example, key performance parameters are reported yearly or quarterly to consistently provide interested parties, and the public, with relevant information for decision-making and risk assessment,” the company said.

In addition to listing the number of vulnerabilities reported and fixed by different software vendors, the fact sheets show the impact of a successful attack on the flaw; whether the security hole was patched or unpatched on the day it was disclosed; and information about the window of exploit opportunity between disclosure and the date a patch was issued.

The fact sheets allow some useful comparisons — such as between Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera. But I’m concerned they will mainly serve to fan the flame wars over which browser is more secure. The reality, as shown by the focus of exploit kits like Eleonore, Crimepack and SEO Sploit Pack, is that computer crooks don’t care which browser you’re using: They rely on users browsing the Web with outdated software, especially browser plugins like Java, Adobe Flash and Reader (all links lead to PDF files).

Once or twice each year, some security company trots out a “study” that counts the number of vulnerabilities that were found and fixed in widely used software products over a given period and then pronounces the worst offenders in a Top 10 list that is supposed to tell us something useful about the relative security of these programs. And nearly without fail, the security press parrots this information as if it were newsworthy.

The reality is that these types of vulnerability count reports — like the one issued this week by application whitelisting firm Bit9 — seek to measure a complex, multi-faceted problem from a single dimension. It’s a bit like trying gauge the relative quality of different Swiss cheese brands by comparing the number of holes in each: The result offers almost no insight into the quality and integrity of the overall product, and in all likelihood leads to erroneous and — even humorous — conclusions.

The Bit9 report is more notable for what it fails to measure than for what it does, which is precious little: The applications included in its 2010 “Dirty Dozen” Top Vulnerable Applications list had to:

Be legitimate, non-malicious applications;

Have at least one critical vulnerability that was reported between Jan. 1, 2010 and Oct. 21, 2010; and

Be assigned a severity rating of high (between 7 and 10 on a 10-point scale in which 10 is the most severe).

The report did not seek to answer any of the questions that help inform how concerned we should be about these vulnerabilities, such as:

Was the vulnerability discovered in-house — or was the vendor first alerted to the flaw by external researchers (or attackers)?

How long after being initially notified or discovering the flaw did it take each vendor to fix the problem?

Which products had the broadest window of vulnerability, from notification to patch?

How many of the vulnerabilities were exploitable using code that was publicly available at the time the vendor patched the problem?

How many of the vulnerabilities were being actively exploited at the time the vendor issued a patch?

Which vendors make use of auto-update capabilities? For those vendors that include auto-update capabilities, how long does it take “n” percentage of customers to be updated to the latest, patched version?

Adobe Systems Inc. is urging users to update installations of Adobe Reader and Acrobat to fix a critical flaw that attackers have been exploiting to break into vulnerable systems.

The update brings Adobe Acrobat and Reader to version 9.3.3 (another update for the older 8.2 line of both products brings the latest version to v. 8.2.3). Patches are available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris versions of these programs. Adobe’s advisory for this update is here, and the Reader update is available from this link — or by opening the program and clicking “Help” and “Check for Updates.” If you download the update from the Adobe Reader homepage, you’ll end up with a bunch of other stuff you probably don’t want (see below, after the jump for more on this).

If you use Adobe Reader or Acrobat, please take a moment to update this software. Users may also want to consider switching to other free PDF readers that are perhaps less of a target for malicious hackers, such as Foxit Reader, Nitro PDF Reader, and Sumatra.